|
 Comments by Continuity Central readers in response to the article Hurricane Katrina: initial impacts on business continuity thinking
ADD YOUR OWN COMMENT
Allen Johnson, scenaris.co.uk
Scale of incident
When you reside in an area that is prone to weather extremes or geological faulting then to plan for the worst is an obligation and not an option. Even if that plan looks completely ‘off the wall’, it should be generated and published because if the worst does happen, you are going to have to create it in any case; that is unless the decision is to fold. The scenarios that were once considered too far fetched, are all too real; and to ignore the worst, simply because it has not yet happened, is folly.
Looting
This is opportunistic theft that presents itself when security is too easily breached. The same happened in London when affected offices from three major bombings were systematically stripped of assets. As unsavoury as this happens to be, insurance should pick up the major part of the bill provided the party affected has taken appropriate precautions and has the right policy cover (see Insurance, below).
Telecommunications
In the UK, the telecommunications services become overwhelmed when a major incident strikes and this was again underpinned on 7/7 and 21/7. The suggestion of satellite telecommunications, however, is a valid alternative because it does not carry the same subscription and traffic levels as the cellphone networks and it gives greater geographic reach where cellphone networks either fail or have black holes. International rescue teams used cellphones in the Turkish earthquakes of the late 90's but reverted to satellite because the earthquakes took out all the other networks.
Insurance
Company insurance reviews by independent expert assessors typically find companies are either under-insured or wrongfully insured. Our insurance expert has yet to find a company that is properly insured prior to his intervention. Policy sellers are the wrong people to provide the right sort of independent advice that a company requires and the time the insured usually discovers the holes in insurance cover is when a claim is submitted. High cost restoration may be met by the insurance world, but ultimately it will slide down the food chain and settle on the payers of insurance premiums when cover renewal becomes due. By way of an example, BI insurance premiums in London alone increased by a minimum of 400% approximately nine months after 9/11, irrespective of insurer.
Warning
Major disasters usually have clues that precede their presence but when they arrive, there is still the element of shock, and in some cases complete surprise. Katrina took time to grow and eventually severe warnings got louder the closer she got, but if people decide not to evacuate, or they put it off until evacuation is irrelevant, then they become victims of more than just the weather. When security is overstretched, lawlessness roams abroad and it is a facet that should accompany every published warning. When flood from a rising river threatens and then recedes, it is a warning as well as a lucky escape.
Steve Gibson, Resilience Centre, Department of Defence Management & Security Analysis, The UK Defence Academy, Cranfield University.
I cannot agree with you on the substantive point of your article - 'Location, location, location...’ I hope that I have not misinterpreted your thrust. Nevertheless …
The Mississippi and particularly the ports at its mouth including New Orleans have collectively been America's import route to its own hinterland and export gateway to the world. The area is geo-politically crucial to the United States if not globally. Historically, it has been instrumental in bringing the US to its dominant trading status [See Strategic Forecast dated 1 Sep 2005 by George Friedman]. Indeed, in part, it may be responsible for America’s current political status.
In much of life, risk-taking rather than risk avoiding usually precedes progress. The Mississippi was tamed and New Orleans' own precarious below-sea-level position was protected in order to take a risk for the potential national benefits that might be exploited. To not be there would have been the bigger ‘sin’, as not being there in the future will also be. Indeed, and in support of your 'relocation' point, the exit and now seeming dispersal of the primary and supporting workforces that run these critical port and maritime assets could well prove to be the debilitating factor in the region's recovery and revival. Equally, I agree that satellite communication, an excellent example of man's ingenuity, would have helped and will undoubtedly help, as will deployable mobile communications networks, RFIDs and, belatedly in this instance, good old helicopters. On the other hand, one cannot help but sense that 'insurance' is a somewhat artificial construct that says more about man's lack of ingenuity and lack of common society - a fearful reaction to uncertainty, even a technocratic short term sop to positivist economics.
Tongue-in-cheek, I wonder where you would locate an American enterprise (?) - the earthquake-prone west coast, the hurricane prone south-east, 'tornado alley' in the middle, snow-bound north-east or the states where no-one live presumably for very good reason. Where for that matter would you locate a port facility that needs deep-water facilities, access to an industrial and agricultural heartland, a workforce to support it, and a near perfect position to conduct world trade? Furthermore, what would be your advice to the extractive industries, that almost universally work in challenging conditions if not challenging locations politically and environmentally? Would it stretch the point to ask where you expect the uniformed services - fire, ambulance, police and armed forces - to operate, other than in challenging locations?
I also sense in the article - I hope wrongly - the creeping use of the 'precautionary principle' as crutch of choice in business continuity management. This 'principle' is dominating the world of health and safety, itself part of the 'politically correct' agenda. Hopefully this blanket approach is a posture slowly being reversed out of as it becomes recognised for the cul de sac that it is [See Minette Marin in the Sunday Times 4 September 2005]. Business continuity is an extremely important and valid discipline; but it should not be the tail that wags the dog of risk management, and especially not from the jaundiced position of the precautionary principle. Risk management is about dealing with uncertainty in order to maximise objectives. That does not implicitly and almost religiously mean the minimising of risk in order to be safe [See Hillson, D & Murray-Webster R, 2005, Understanding & Managing Risk Attitude, Aldershot: Gower, ISBN: 0-566-08627]. Neither safety nor security are equations to zero risk. They are accompaniments to achieving business objectives as cognizant of pertinent uncertainty as possible. They are means to ends not ends in themselves.
I hope that the heavily bureaucratic and mediocre response to uncertainty that characterises much of health and safety is not about to percolate through and stifle ingenuity, entrepreneurial spirit, and progress in other areas of life that is desperately needed to get us through the far more crucial 'bottleneck' that EO Wilson [Wilson, EO, 2002, The Future of Life, London: Abacus, ISBN: 0-349-11579-6] and others portray as humanity's current situation. If it does, I would argue, that it is probably 180 degrees in the wrong direction.
Finally, may I return to the question of society and suggest that the appliance of science and technology, particularly in a technocratic system that fails to understand the social, political, and environmental context, will probably fail. Whilst terrorism, unlike ‘natural’ disasters, hopes that its action may precipitate a breakdown in social cohesion, all such incidents, whatever their origin, reflect the strength of pre-existing bonds across a community. At such times, societies that are together pull together. Those that are apart, fall apart. [See Durodié, W., 2004, Sociological Aspects of Risk and Resilience in Response to Acts of Terrorism, World Defence Systems, 7, 214-6]. This has been the failure of 'business continuity' in New Orleans- social resilience - or 'attitude. It seems to range from a practical failure to develop environmental defences fit for what we do know about contemporary environmental risk, through a response clearly inappropriate to the risk event, the growth of a risk averse rather than a risk taking culture, to an attitudinal malaise that has neglected community and societal resilience as being a/the significant resource to draw upon when times get tough – and so clearly reported in the breakdown of elements of America’s ‘fourth’ world anarchic Southern communities [See the prescient Putnam, R, 2001, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, London: Simon & Schuster, ISBN: 0-743-20304-6].
The human being is capable of achieving many great things on behalf of its societies. Indeed, human ingenuity (and a little luck) has made many societies great. Of course human failings have contributed to their downfall. However, to begin from a somewhat misanthropic view - which the precautionary principle does - will be to begin from a position of disadvantage. [See Furedi, F, reprint 2003, The Culture of Fear: Risk-taking and the Culture of Low Expectation, London: Continuum, ISBN: 0-8264- 5930-7].
What is that word for the approach that stands diametrically opposed to 'precautionary' - knowledgeable, wise, rational? Yes, that might be it - the 'rational principle'! But, please, in an existential rather than economic sense of the rational actor paradigm.
NB. Just as this response is posted I note John Glenn’s and Terry Henderson’s points [below] – they all seem technically, operationally and mechanistically valid and agreeable (particularly the prior warning shots); but they reside in and serve a bigger cultural, contextual and political picture. From one of America’s ancestral homes at least – this bigger picture does not look pretty. I would like to be able to say that we will take no lessons; but perhaps we should.
Terry Henderson, ADP
LOOTING - The very presence of a working lights-on building in the middle of chaos will draw people to it. While looting is an issue, can you imagine being in the middle of a functioning recovery center, everything is working and you need to literally fight off survivors seeking food, water and shelter?
PLANNING - How many us in the business continuity field have done assessments and table top exercises that identified serious risks that fell on deaf ears. Did this have to happen - NO!. Within the past year the risk of the failed levee system was identified and basically ignored. It would cost too much. How many executives treat our serious risk assessments the same way. There is an old saying, "you can pay me now, or you can pay me later". When you compare the cost of prevention in this case, it pales in light of the cost of the recovery that must now occur.
FUTURE/GLOBAL - The ‘green’ folks out there have long contended that global warming was going to get us. Is this the first real indication of the truth in those thoughts? Go stand on a dock in any major seaport city in the world and see how far below you the water is. Abandonment of major low lying coastal areas may just be around the corner.
John Glenn, CRP
"Amongst business continuity professionals, the most commonly expressed sentiment in the last few days seems to be that nothing could have been done to prepare local businesses for the scale of the catastrophe brought upon them by Hurricane Katrina. In many respects, this is true. Some disasters are just simply too huge to expect business continuity plans to enable a
rapid return to business-as-usual."
Which professionals did you ask? Ones in the US which, experience has shown, almost ALWAYS are certain something could have and should have been done, or those in the UK who thought even the relatively minor British Airways incident could not have been avoided/mitigated?
I don't mean to offend, but you folks in the UK seem to have an entirely different view of business continuity than we do in the colonies.
There is NO reason critical, private papers should be floating around the streets.
There is NO reason Gulf-area businesses should not have had backup plans to meet their SLAs, even if it meant jobbing out work to firms well inland.
There is NO reason why a company selling to a Gulf-area business should not have anticipated that the customer would fail - for any reason; failure happens every day due to personal, financial, technology, environmental, and government-caused disasters.
Yes, Katrina is a tragedy; people died and that in itself is a tragedy. Yes, Katrina will cost hundreds their livelihood for the interim. Yes, yes, and yes again that it is a disaster of rare - but not unique - scale. BUT, business continuity plans could have prevented the papers floating on the waters; business continuity plans could have helped businesses survive elsewhere - including assembly points for personnel. Personal ‘business continuity’ plans could have prevented some of the ‘where are my relatives’ worries.
LOCATION? Are you going to ask a small business to relocate away from its customer base? I have seen (US) Fortune 100s locate in a flood plain . . . a company which had a BC plan before the move failed to consult a planner - business continuity or otherwise. As long as governments allow building in areas of know dangers - flood, tidal waves, earthquakes, landslides, sink holes, etc. fools will build on those areas. Business continuity planners should try to influence planning bodies to limit construction in such areas
LOOTING? Certainly looters are covered in a BC plan – it’s called security. But for the most part, things in a business - computers, etc. - are replaceable and are insured. DATA must be protected with passwords and encryption. The average looter has neither skills nor inclination to ‘break into’ secure data. Businesses such as electronics stores must have some security measures in place AND insurance.
TELECOM? What you addressed primarily applies to emergency management. As for personnel, have assembly areas identified - local for minor events, distant for Katrina-type events. (Katrina is NOT unique; tsunami comes to mind; insurrections in Europe and Africa also are in mind.) Some things are beyond the capabilities of cell and satcom simply on a cost basis. Of course if your only concern is IT and its personnel, maybe sat com costs are assumable . . . but then you will have servers serving but no one in a profit center using the data.
INSURANCE? It must be included in its many forms. Property, Interruption. Life. Hopefully the insurance retailer will be sufficiently investigated so we'll know there is a consortium backing the policy A Katrina-type event will strap most companies - as at least some of us learned with Hurricane Andrew.
•Date: 8th September 2005 •Region: US/World •Type:
Article •Topic: BC general
Rate
this article or make a comment - click
here
Updated 6th September |
